Sunday, March 25, 2012

Digital Idenitity - Keyboard Warriors (Anon)

My interpretation of the phrase "Digital Identity" is the identity you choose to belong to, whilst in the digital world. In today's highly digital society, things like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, MySpace, Blogger, Bebo and everything else are very common. Every day, a huge number of us use a social networking site, and the best bit about it, is that we can choose what we want to broadcast - we can create our own personas online, because we can be who we want. This obviously has its upsides and downsides.

Being Anon or Anonymous is a basic way of being online ergo has many pros and cons. For example People are a lot meaner when they know there are no consequences for their actions. Those who post anonymously are free to form malicious opinions, which can offend the writer of an article or another fellow commenter. The concept of being anonymous makes people more daring, and using websites such as ChatRoulette as an example, there is a familiar sight of men waving their genitalia at the camera, which most likely offends, but for some could be a positive aspect of anonymity if you are into that kind of thing…. However Anonymity also protects those who are in fear of persecution, which for me is something the internet provides freely. You are immune from physical attack and in most cases judicial power. This could mean that what you read online is the true nature of people away from social boundaries.

Many like to create personas to ‘troll’ other people, but offline are normal people. There are thoseof whom act the same offline and online, and those who create a scene and see posting on a forum as a game. Ultimately, the feeling of being anonymous gives users somewhat of a poetic licence to be outrageous, even if they are posting in a tight-knit community where people may know each other offline. I don’t think that being anonymous is a bad thing, as it is often hard to enforce any laws on the internet. As the internet is such a large place I think it will be hard to ever tame it, and I think that people will always want the right to be anonymous, not just online, but offline too. It promotes a freedom which we all have the right to and online groups such as Anonymous certainly prove this.